obedience

if there are large distance between the teacher and the learner( eg.in seperate rooms) then the space is known as the buffer, as he is protected from the consequenses it being that he cant see him suffering.

if the teacher was right next to the learner and saw him in pain then they are more unlikely to follow the orders as they can see the consequences, and there is no space to act as a buffer.

Legitimate authority

the teacher obeys the experimenter as he is wearing a lab coat so he is seen as a person with more knowledge and as if he knew what he was doing.

if the experimenter drops the lab coat then the obedience is likely to drop as then his authority doesn't seem that legitimate.

Agentic state

is when you are protected by the consequences by a person.

when the teacher is told that he is not responsible for the consequence he carries on

he asks the experimenter who is going to be taking the responsibility and he replies "I am"

Gradual commitment.

the volts went up gradually in 15 volts and then you start thinking 'what's a few more'

as you have already gone up you start to feel committed to the authority figure ,as you have already started the experiment. so you carry on.

Evaluation

internal validity.

strengths

they gave the participant a shock to make it seem more realistic so then they think that they are actually giving them shocks and its not a joke

it was highly controlled so there were no extraneous variables, then its easy to replicate.

it was set in Yale so it seems very official persuades the volunteers to take it seriously.

limitations

they were paid so it makes them feel committed to carry on.

there are demand characteristics and investigator effects, it being that they may react with each person differently.

ecological validity

its set ina lab so they may be more obedient and then that would end up measuring how people react in a lab not obedience.

its a lab experiment so its artificial, realistically no one is actually going to be asked to perform this task.

population validity.

they were all white american males that volunteered.

people who volunteer tent to share the same characteristics so it only applies to that group.

you are unable to generalise to the whole population as its not representative.

Ethical issues.

DECEPTION they were deceived about the aim of the study and the use of confederate e.g the experimenter and learner.

INFORMED CONSENT they were unable to give full informed consent as they were unaware of what they were actually consenting to and that they were being deceived.

RIGHT TO WITHDRAW as they weren't given full informed consent they didn't have this right and also they of wanted to withdraw had they known what this study was about.

PROTECTION OF PARTICIPANTS they weren't told what it was about and had they known they may of been upset.

REAL LIFE application its good as then they know how to improve the training given to soldiers and nurses.